One more room and we can end this week with darkness from start to end. This room is the bunk room with all the beds, so it's finally come to the point where it's time to add all of those skeletons. I made a few in various positions, and again added some faces to random props across the room. Also, tentacles, because nothing says creepy ghost world like a set of tentacles, right?
Now, I'm sad to say this will be the last post [.....]
And here you can see those purple-shade vines for yourself, albeit in a different room! For this room I wanted to make more things seem 'alive'. It's a theme I want to use more for these spirit world versions of each room; things being 'possessed' or seeming to come alive (by getting a face, a mouth or eye/eyes). So I put strange faces on pretty much everything that's a static piece of decoration such as the buckets and boxes (and the exit). That and more skeleton pieces, [.....]
Actually, how about we make this whole week follow this theme? As such, here's the third video, featuring the random battle room of the first floor:
Here I also played around with making the moss red and the water black, a theme I think we'll follow in the rest of the rooms (including those I already finished). After I saved the image below I also experimented with making the vines on the wall darker and of a slightly purple shade, as well, which I think [.....]
More creepiness! This time focusing on a single room. There's skeletons, spiders, eyes, tongues, skulls, oh my! If you get any more cool ideas for creepy stuff to add, feel free to let me know! Some things will be added by Fred as well, and some of the things I've made now will probably get some sort of animation by him too. It's gonna be a blast!
The video:
And the finished background:
[.....]
And now, to add a sprinkle of creepiness... As you go into the spirit world you begin to see things, shall we say, a bit differently. Dark things appear, and some things may not be what you thought they were... And so on.
It's a fine line here between going too far into spooky game territory and having just the right touch of spook, so we'll see how things go with that.
Here's a video featuring some of the creepiness in the making, anyway:
[.....]
Now it's time to slowly begin with the third floor! Here we'll have a slightly different floor type, and the decorations will be a bit more fancy seeing as we're moving up to some fancy people's living quarters. As such I've put two busts in this room, and further, similar decorations will be added; though right now I'm a little unsure of how much I can put in this room since I don't know if it'll be used for fighting yet.
I think after this [.....]
Today it's patch day! On frontline we now have a bunch of new quests, items, craftables, and so on! Also, sound effects!!
So basically, the patch you'll be able to play today is what we intend as a release for Stable, once all the bugs have been ironed out. As always, we're super interested in hearing your feedback on these new additions, so please go ahead and share your thoughts!
I'd say the main thing we added aside from a bunch of quests are the memory [.....]
Here's the corridor, which will connect the two smaller rooms showed previously. For this room, we've made some special decorations; cannons and cannon balls!
We'll probably place these cannon balls here and there on the first floor to serve as 'ammo' for the wizard's telekinesis attack: after all, what better thing to hurl at the hero but a cannon ball? That should do some damage... :)
[.....]
Alright, stop, we're actually not done with patch stuff yet (I knew it). After testing a bunch of quests in the desert each of us got quite annoyed with the fact that there's no teleport plate in Port Monnaie, so as a bonus for people who have a lot of extra gold to spend, we'll include a salesman selling a teleport plate that will activate for Port Monnaie once you purchase it.
As such, this NPC salesman need not only a sprite, but also a portrait, [.....]
New week, more ghost ship backgrounds! In this second smaller room, we're introducing the first giant hole in a floor on the ghost ship. On the first floor, we kind of wanted to embrace the fact that we're on a half-ruined ship by having areas filled with water, but on these upper floors we want dark holes here and there instead, which we intend to fill with blinking eyes and other spooky things when you're in the ghost world:
[.....]
Next, we have a set of rooms one next to the other, both of the smaller kind. There will be a corridor above these two rooms, where the path is blocked, so you have to pass through these two rooms to get to the other side. And here's the first one:
Like with the bunk room, we have a few ideas for ghost world-only decorations here too. In this case, we want to make a spooky version of the painting on the right and possibly [.....]
Now, there's a lot more Ghost Ship backgrounds to do, so let's jump straight back into it! First up is a bunk room of sorts, where the sailors used to sleep when they were still working on the ship and they weren't ghosts:
Here you will battle enemies, and once a prototype for the kitchen is ready, I will add the kitchen on the right side, one platform up but on the same screen (I will add a jumpdown back into this bunkroom from there). One [.....]
Just a few more thing we've managed to forget: the shop titles for all of the shop! We've been so busy making things for them to sell that we actually managed to forget they need graphics for the shop's interfaces.... Oh well, that's an easy fix:
All of the shops in Port Monnaie will carry new unique items, though some will also sell things available earlier in the game. The Potion shop will work just like Remedi's Alchemy and will allow you to change your potions; [.....]
And now for some last minute additions before the patch! First of all, the background for the professor Pine and Tannie cutscene, which needed a bunch of new (and old) stuff, and for some reason I decided to make a short video of that process:
We're also introducing a pair of friendly faces in the town of Port Monnaie. Remember where these guys are from?
Perhaps this cutout will serve as an additional reminder:
The girl has been animated by [.....]
We're drawing closer to the stable patch, and in doing so we're in need of a few more items! Here we have the creation of a vest, a pair of shoes, a full card album (could it be real?!), a pair of earrings and a new hat: the fez!
Since we decided that the shield salesman will be dealing with armor as well, I figured I'd put a random armor among his many shields to illustrate that fact as well:
And here's [.....]
And now an update from the programming and animation department!
Teddy and Fred have been working hard on adding the remaining Flashback Orbs, which which means there's a ton of new sprites and animations needed. First one of young Zhamla casting a spell:
Vilya beating someone up:
Young mandrake's design and animations of him walking threateningly and running away from something scary:
And a bunch of designs for an ancient piece of weaponry, once meant for Phaseman. Unfortunately (?) for [.....]
Cheers!
